A state appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s decision rejecting Jerry Sandusky’s latest bid for a new trial.
Pennsylvania Superior Court agreed that the former Penn State football assistant coach did not prove that the evidence presented for a new trial would not be used solely to impeach witnesses’ credibility, nor that it would likely result in a different verdict from his original conviction on child sexual abuse charges.
“Sandusky made no presentation sufficient to warrant an evidentiary hearing, let alone be awarded a new trial,” President Judge Emeritus Correale Stevens wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel.
Sandusky’s attorneys have sought a new trial based on “after-discovered evidence” they claimed shows some witnesses were subjected to repressed memory therapy and suggestive interview techniques that elicited false memories of abuse, a contention that has long been at the center of Sandusky’s various appeals over the past decade.
Among the evidence were recordings of a supporter of Sandusky who posed as a victim in an attempt to prove an attorney and psychologist had used suggestive questioning and repressed memory therapy with men who ultimately said they were abused by Sandusky. The man recorded conversations and therapy sessions over three years.
But according to the 33-page Superior Court opinion, at no point did the man claim the psychologist recommended or practiced repressed memory therapy in his case, and the psychologist explicitly denied engaging in any suggestive techniques.
“The information and evidence presented in this matter do not raise an issue of material fact,” Stevens wrote. “The only facts alleged are that multiple child victims were averse to making the difficult revelation of sexual abuse at first but came forward later.”
Sandusky attorney Al Lindsay did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The Superior Court panel also upheld the trial court’s ruling that Sandusky must pay $44,688.58 for the cost of prosecution.
Sandusky, now 80, was convicted in June 2012 of 45 counts related to child sexual abuse of boys between 1995 and 2008. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in state prison and is currently incarcerated at SCI-Laurel Highlands in Somerset County.
